When the Eagles opened Sunday’s game in Dallas with three touchdowns on their first three possessions, it seemed like they were on their way to their ninth win of the season.
As it turned out, though, the 21-0 lead was fool’s gold. The Eagles would give up a touchdown just before halftime and pick up one first down over their next five possessions before missing a field goal early in the fourth quarter. The Cowboys would tie the game on their next possession and go on to win 24-21 on a field goal at the end of a wild fourth quarter.
The Eagles turned the ball over twice in the final quarter and they committed 14 penalties over the course of the game, which were the kinds of errors that quarterback Jalen Hurts said the team has to address in the wake of their stunning meltdown.
“You look inward first,” Hurts said in his postgame press conference. “Looking at the things we can control from a penalty standpoint, an execution standpoint, those are all things we control. I don’t point towards how we adjusted or what we did or didn’t do. In the end, we had an opportunity to win the game and we didn’t. We’ve got to own this one, let it light a fire in us as a team and stay together and move forward.”
Sunday’s collapse stands out, but the Eagles’ offensive inconsistency has been a season-long issue and urgency to fix it was already high. They’ll have a quick turnaround to Friday’s game against the Bears and keeping the Cowboys loss from carrying over into that contest will join the offensive questions as top priorities in Philly this week.